Category Archives: Culture

Apr 30 2015
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Culture, Democracy

What, us worry?

 

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So we are, after all, a rollicking, jolly bunch. We stick our fingers in our ears and sing “la…la…la”. We believe in the power of positive thinking and even giggle appreciatively when some curmudgeon suggests we’d be better off sticking our digits in the fiscal dam that’s just about to break in this province.

Oh well, what shall do about the inveterately “happy” amongst us?

Give them all a kiss, a slap on the back, a high-five?

Sure, why not. After all, summer is the best two-and-a-half weeks of the year in these parts, and the rumors are that it didn’t actually die in 2015, after plummeting into a pothole sometime between the first snowfall and the last.

Maybe it’s time to accept the fact that despite what nature and man throw at us in this often-benighted corner of the world, we refuse to be sad, morose or even (gasp!) realistic about our present circumstances. Maybe it’s time to take the win, for a change.

According to a Statistics Canada survey released last week Saint John and Moncton are the fourth and seventh happiest cities, respectively, in Canada. This, despite the fact that downtown development in both bustling metropolises is moribund, house prices are plummeting, for-sale signs are springing up like tulips in an April downpour, and municipal mothers and fathers are just about at the end of their wits trying to figure out how to keep the figurative wheels from falling off their metaphorical trucks.

Still, reveals StatsCan, “Many factors account for differences in life satisfaction, and there is a growing body of international and Canadian research in this domain. This includes work that examines the role played by the physical characteristics of geographic areas, such as urban size and population density, natural endowments, economic opportunity or deprivation, and access to, and quality of, infrastructure, amenities and services.”

Sure, and why not jump aboard the “happiness” train? It goes to Pleasantville by way of the big, rock candy mountain. There, at that mythical depot, we will meet all who went away from us, and all who will return someday – just as soon as we can invent and sustain good, long-term jobs for them upon their arrival.

This “happiness” garbage is a pug’s game, played by the powerful to rook the penurious. If we spent more time genuinely examining that for which we are grateful, we might discover the joy that’s mere illusion to a vast swath of our fellow men and women, under the influence of daily propaganda.

I am, for example, grateful for a democracy in which periodic voting is not always a pro-forma exercise designed to establish and enable despotism.

I am grateful for knowing that I can still count on my neighbours ­– even some elected representatives of my province and country – to boost me when the economic chips are down.

I am grateful for my parents, siblings, wife, daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren and for the fact that they are alive and kicking against the bleak and black of daily imbecilities that seem to proscribe everyone’s life these days.

I am grateful for the home I can offer to them, for the absurd amounts of snow I shovel, for the weeds I pull, for the lawn I mow, for the people I meet at the local Sobeys and liquor store, for the guy I greet at the corner of Main Street and Robinson Court – the guy who needs a coin or two to continue singing and playing his acoustic renditions of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” and “Old Man”.

Am I happy?

Ask me after the next federal election.

For now, I’m merely waiting, with ears wide open.

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Apr 08 2015
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Culture, Humour

The Great Nice North

Resurgo is action in latin. And that's a dead language. Get 'er done boys and girls

American writer Eric Weiner thinks it’s nice to be nice to the nice. And by “nice” he means Canadians. Writing for BBC Travel recently, he reported that our “niceness” hits him like a blast of polar-bear breath (the branded Coke variety; not the real thing that’ll rip your lungs out, Jim) just as soon as he approaches the 49th Parallel.

“We experience Canadian nice as soon as we reach customs,” he notes. “The U.S. border guards are gruff and all business. The Canadians, by contrast, are unfailingly polite, even as they grill us about the number of wine bottles we’re bringing into the country. One year, we had failed to notice that our 9-year-old daughter’s passport had expired. They, nicely, let us enter anyway. The niceness continues for our entire trip, as we encounter nice waiters, nice hotel clerks, nice strangers.”

What’s more, he observes, “Canadian niceness is pure, and untainted by the passive-aggressive undertones found in American niceness. It’s also abundant. Canada is to niceness as Saudi Arabia is to oil. Researchers have yet to analyse Canadian niceness empirically, but studies have found that Canadians, perhaps in an effort not to offend, use an overabundance of ‘hedge words’, such as ‘could be’ and ‘not bad’. Then there is the most coveted of Canadian words: ‘sorry’. Canadians will apologize for anything and to anything.”

Actually, Mr. Weiner, Canada is to oil as Saudi Arabia is to. . .well, oil. Except we’re colder, our streets are lined with glaciers and, occasionally, mud. And in the long, dark, winter night that is Fort McMurray, Alberta, I dare you to find one transplanted Maritimer riding the derricks of the tar sands who will say “sorry” for anything.

It’s all about frame of reference, Mr. Weiner, frame of reference.

For example, long ago an American tourist drove me off the road somewhere between Belleville and Cornwall, Ontario. He was in a hurry and, so in no time, I was in the ditch about 100 kilometers from where I once played pee-wee hockey and had once hurt the feelings of a juvenile competitor (from Buffalo, no less) by deriding his ill-fitting jersey.

The traveller stopped his car, railed at me for holding him up and kicked my tires. In return, I thumbed my nose at him, called him a “gosh darn yankee”, and phoned the cops for moral support and a tow. They obliged; no questions asked. (We Canadians are “nice” that way).

Once in Fargo, North Dakota, I met an official from the local tourism authority who refused to tell me the location of the mighty Mississippi River. I informed him that if he persisted with his typical American rudeness, I’d be forced to lodge a formal complaint with his supervisor. He laughed and queried, “What are you? Some sort of Canadian?” When I smiled and murmered, “sorry, eh?” he turned ghost-white and hired a limo to take me all the way to Brainerd, Minnesota, where the Old Miss begins as a mere trickle. I returned the favor by resisting the temptation to mock his midwestern accent. (Again, we Canadians are “nice” that way).

Still, Mr. Weiner does have a point. As he quotes my old acquaintance, Michael Valpy – a journalist, formerly with the Globe and Mail – our national politeness is a “defence mechanism” that “stems from inferiority and an awkward awareness that our clothes don’t fit properly and we always have bad haircuts and really don’t do anything great.”

Yeah, Mike, that’s “nice”, real “nice”. But let’s just keep that between ourselves from now on. I know where you live, pal.

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Apr 06 2015
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Climate, Culture, Economy, Oil and Gas

The winter of our discontent

We could sell the snow. There's plenty of that

“Atrocious” is the adjective that Canada’s central banker, Stephen Poloz, chooses in order to characterize the effects of low oil prices on the Canadian economy in the frigid months ahead. Sort of like the weather, which is, on the East Coast, equally vile.

Four-hundred-some-odd centimeters of the white stuff alighted on fair Moncton this winter. A good 350 cms of it still perches stubbornly on the ground. The long-range forecast calls for another 40 in the days ahead, bringing us right into daffodil season. It’s a safe bet we’ll beat our 1974 record and top the scales at more than 18.5 feet of dirty, frozen water before the deluge is finally over. If it will be over.

Atrocious, indeed.

I’m taking safe bets that the last of Moncton’s cheerless snow mountains will not be gone before Canada Day, and while the rest of the country celebrates the arrival of summer by beach-combing with ice-cream cones, we’ll be repurposing our shovels as snowboards (having abandoned our gardens to the inevitable effects of short- and long-term climate change).

Oil and gas production, we are told, has something to do with this anomalous circumstance. As David Suzuki writes in a recent blog post, “Rising average temperatures do not simply mean balmier winters. Some regions will experience more extreme heat while others may cool slightly. Flooding, drought and intense summer heat could result.”

He’s kidding, right?

In fact, according to the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change, he’s onto something. It writes: “Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere, where such assessment is possible (medium confidence). The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend show a warming of 0.85 (0.65 to 1.06) °C 2 over the period 1880 to 2012, when multiple independently produced datasets exist.”

So what accounts for this (and last) winter’s brutal encroachment into spring along the northeastern seaboard of North America?

Blame it on the “polar vortex”. Here’s what Discovery.news.com has to say about the lately observed phenomenon:

“Some researchers suggest that. . .kinks in the jet stream that allow. . .cold air to spill out could actually become more common in a warming world because of changes to the environment where that cold air originates – the Arctic. Rutgers University sea ice researcher Jennifer Francis was one of the first to suggest a link between the steady decline of Arctic sea ice caused by warming and the extreme twists and turns that the jet stream – the fast-moving river of air miles up in the atmosphere – can take northward and southward. (At the same time that a dip in the jet stream sends polar air southward, a corresponding ridge can push warmer conditions up into the Arctic.)

“The idea is that as white, reflective sea ice has been increasingly melting to lower and lower areas in the summer, there is more dark, open ocean that can absorb the sun’s rays. As sea ice begins to reform as fall progresses, the water releases that heat into the atmosphere. That added heat could be pushing atmospheric patterns in a way that destabilizes the polar vortex.”

Lovely! Or is the proper word “atrocious”?

In any case, the oil and gas chickens in this country may have finally come home to roost. I’m buying a Canada Goose parka in July, when Moncton’s snow mountains of 2015 might just be gone – just in time for winter.

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Mar 25 2015
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Business, Culture, Demographics, Economy

Tuning out our insular attitudes

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In the time-honored practice of central Canadian commentary about what’s ruining the economically flaccid East Coast, only one thing’s more annoying to a Maritimer than a diatribe that manages to get it completely wrong.

And that’s one that manages to get it utterly right.

Globe and Mail writer-at-large John Ibbitson’s lengthy piece, entitled “The incredible shrinking region”, in that newspaper’s Focus section last Saturday, left me with the urge both to pat him on the back and punch him in the nose.

That, in an odd way, is his point.

“Disaster looms unless Maritimers work together to reverse the slide – and, in some respects, adjust their thinking,” Mr. Ibbitson writes.

Quoting University of Prince Edward Island political scientist Peter McKenna, he observes that “the Maritimes enjoy strong social cohesion. . .‘You don’t get that sharp polarization’ between left and right seen elsewhere in Canada. But there is also a downside: ‘a particular resistance to change.’”

University of Moncton economist Donald Savoie concurs and believes he knows what’s behind Atlantic Canadian intractability. “Our region, more than any other. . .remains rural,” he tells Mr. Ibbitson. “New ideas and thinking usually come from urban areas, which are home to universities, innovation and less social and religious pressure.” Crucially, though, Mr. Savoie says, “Our region also lacks the energy, entrepreneurial spirit and the desire for a fresh start that new Canadians bring.”

Ouch, indeed!

Is there a solution? Mr. Ibbitson and the men and women he interviewed for his story like to think so.

First, stop looking to Ottawa for bandaids. Governing politicos and their bureaucratic factotums there couldn’t care less about us.

Second, make sure that the Atlantic region’s private enterprisers are actually equipped to grow their various provincial economies.

Third, acknowledge that urban, not rural, centers are where the true action occurs. (A place like Greater Moncton, for example, already seeds southeastern New Brunswick’s villages and hamlets with far more economic capacity than they can, and do, account for on their own).

Fourth, create a single, inter-provincial trade zone in the Maritimes where modern – not archaic – principles of commerce encourage productive collaboration on government procurement, labour mobility and skills and professional accreditation.

Fifth, and finally, attract and retain immigrants. Lots of them.

As perspicacious as Mr. Ibbitson’s piece is, he is not the first (nor will he be the last) to imagine that these measures are long-term solutions to Maritime malaise.

The enduring problem in this part of Canada, however, has never been understanding the dimension of our collective economic difficulty, or even crafting handy steps to resolve it. The problem has been that we’ve never really wanted to confront any challenge that extends beyond our individual front doors or back fences.

The real conundrum here is not the fiscal morass that besets our governments or the associated demographic perils of low birth rates, aging producers and accelerating outmigration. The real peril is that though we know well what to do with ourselves, we simply choose to do precisely nothing.

In fairness to us, this is not a pathology exclusive to the Maritimes. “Head-in-the-sanditis” is now rampant in Toronto, Vancouver and Alberta, where home-buyers still leverage their futures against absurdly overpriced shacks on the wholly discredited notion that the status quo in human affairs is, somehow, an immutable law of nature.

It isn’t, and we on the East Coast should know this better than anyone in the country. More’s the pity, and the shame.

What is ruining the economically flaccid East Coast? It’s not central Canadian commentators. It’s not even Stephen Harper.

It’s just us. It has always been just us.

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Jan 16 2015
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Culture, Economy, Media

For a prominent prognosticator, no easy answers in the year ahead

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Reading The Economist’s redoubtable annual turn as Nostradamus, we will be forgiven if we emerge shocked, appalled and fundamentally confused.

After all, this is what the western world’s leading print pundit of fair-market capitalism does best: perplex.

“The World in 2015” imparts much the same wisdom as the various “Worlds” the magazine has published since big-picture, 30,000-foot views became both the sage and financially responsible way to board-up the bottom lines of publications heading into the otherwise preoccupied end-of-year times, just around the Christian holidays.

In the early 1980s, at the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, these annual numbers were considered essential reading for cub reporters – just as important, for example, as the Canadian Securities Institute’s textbooks for aspiring investment, dealers, brokers and floor traders.

And as metro and national beat scribblers might have tucked into Charles Dickens, while the snow fell gently on the gritty curbs of downtown Toronto, we trenchers at the ROB studiously perused the writings of Walter Bagehot, The Economist’s preeminent editor (between 1860 and 1877) for clarity about the how the world’s financial systems worked then, and perhaps now, to sadly little avail.

Complexity is, of course, the essential nature of modernity. And accepting intricacy – nay, embracing it – in the affairs of men and women of good conscience is, arguably, what The Economist does best (hence, the name of the publication). In this regard, the 2015 outlook edition does not disappoint.

In his piece, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait, writes, “Of all the predictions to be made in 2015, none seems safer than the idea that across the great democracies people will feel deeply let down by those who lead them. In Britain, Spain and Canada, elections will give voters a chance to unleash some of those frustrations.”

Are you listening Messrs. Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau? How about you, Barack Obama, one-time savior of the disavowed?

“The levels of unpopularity and disengagement in the West have now risen to staggering levels,” Micklethwait continues. “Since 2004 a clear majority of Americans have told Gallup that they are dissatisfied with the way they are governed, with the numbers of those fed-up several times climbing above 80 per cent (higher than during Watergate. Britain’s Conservative Party, one of the West’s most successful political machines had three million members in the 1950s; it will fight the (general) election in May with fewer than 200,000.”

So, then, we may reasonably assume, democracy is on the run.

But, wait, here’s what The Economist’s foreign editor, Edward Carr, writes in the same issue:

“Look on the bright side. . .Armed with more realistic expectations, optimists can point to three reasons for hoping for something better in 2015. The first is that democracies take time to respond to new threats and dangers, but when they do they tend to be committed to their new policies. . .The second reason to temper pessimism is adaptation. . .In 2015, China and Japan will begin to put aside their differences. Not because either is willing to give ground on their in their long-running territorial dispute over some rocky outcrops in the East China Sea, but because both need the economic boost from sustained trade and investment between them. . .The third reason concerns America. . .(Some have said) that (Barack Obama) is weak and distracted, and others (have said) that the United States is falling into decline. The charges distort Mr. Obama’s thinking and vastly overstate America’s loss of power.”

In fact, it’s hard to argue with a five-year recovery that has returned five million jobs to the biggest economy on the planet, reduced unemployment to below 5.6 per cent, and goosed annual GDP growth (in that country) to between three and 3.5 per cent over the next 15 months.

Perplexing, indeed.

Are we going to hell in a hand basket; or are we at the cusp of a new age of fair-market capitalism, powered by democracy movements that fully appreciate the role that healthy public institutions play in realizing their peaceful, common goals?

Let us dust off our crystal balls, for all the good they will do us.

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Jan 13 2015
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Culture, Democracy, Media

Testing the meaning of tolerance

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Irony is, after all, its stock in trade.

How surprising is it, then, to learn that, just before the fatal attacks on 12 of its staffers last week, the French satirical organ, Charlie Hebdo, was well on its way to organ failure – the victim of falling sales and dwindling readership?

Now, it will live forever, not so much as a worthy compendium of political commentary and provocative humour, but as a symbol of French resistance to tyranny. (Not exactly what the gang of murderous thugs, brandishing kalashnikovs and invocations to the prophet Muhammad, was hoping to achieve).

Then, of course, around the world there were organized marches in memoriam for the dead and in solidarity for the principles of free speech. In the City of Lights, alone, gathered a throng of 1.5 million comprising people from all walks of life – some deserving to attend; some, in the opinion of many, not so much.

According to a piece in the Guardian online, “Press freedom campaigners condemned the presence of world leaders attending the unity rally in Paris on Sunday who have poor records on human rights and the free press in their home countries. Reporters without Borders singled out leaders from Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as being responsible for particularly harsh environments for journalists. These countries rank respectively 159th, 154th, 148th, 121st and 118th out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom in a league table compiled by the group.

“‘We should show solidarity with Charlie Hebdo without forgetting the world’s other Charlies,’ said Christophe Deloire, secretary general of the campaign group. ‘It would be intolerable [if] representatives from countries that reduce their journalists to silence profit from this emotional outpouring to. . .improve their international image. . .We should not allow the predators of the press to spit on the graves of Charlie Hebdo.’”

Naturally, this said nothing about the quality of the publication’s satire, itself – a topic that has, understandably, garnered little attention ever since Paris conferred honorary citizenship on the magazine, the national government announced a bail-out fund of one million euros so it can, in the words of French Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin, “continue next week and the week after that and the week after that.”

Indeed, reported Reuters, “Albert Uderzo, the 87-year-old who created the famed French comic character Asterix, announced he would come out of retirement to help illustrate the irreverent weekly, which plans to print a million copies of its next edition next Wednesday.”

All of which may have irked Atlantic magazine writer Scott Sayare into penning a rare online screed. “Charlie’s hope, according to its editors, is to show believers the folly of their faith,” he writes. “This can hardly be called an undertaking of tolerance, that other virtue of liberal democracy.”

In fact, he jabs, “the impulse to consecrate Charlie Hebdo in a moment of horror and anger – an impulse felt far beyond France – is eminently comprehensible. But one may mourn the dead and condemn their senseless slaughter, and hail their courage in carrying out a mission in which they deeply believed, without celebrating the magazine for virtues it did not espouse.”

Frankly, he notes, “until the killings, Charlie Hebdo was not much celebrated or even particularly valued – publicly, at any rate – by the French, though the many slander cases brought against it came with a certain amount of publicity; as of 2012, its weekly print run was about 60,000 copies, about a tenth of what the country’s most popular news weeklies sell. . .Charlie Hebdo is not a racist publication. . . The magazine is, however, intolerant of religion and believers of all sorts, and smug in those anticlerical convictions. Dialogue with its opponents was never of much interest, and it has repeatedly chosen to target some of France’s most vulnerable inhabitants for provocation. . .It is a publication that champions its speech rights with all the crude prurience and vitriol and rhetorical excess the law permits.”

And yet, one could argue persuasively, that it is precisely such coarseness – once, not very long ago, dismissed and derided by the French establishment – that has galvanized, through tragedy, a nation and much of the western world.

How brutally ironic, indeed.

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Dec 12 2014
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Culture, Idiocracy

Belly-button-peering boomers don’t worry, be happy

Who says I'm not happy?

Who says I’m not happy?

As the days trundle by like rocks, gathering speed, rolling down a hill, my thoughts frequently turn inward; and from such reverie a question inevitably arises: Am I happy?

I don’t mean contented or merely satisfied with my lot – my spiffy, little car that still drives, after three years, the way my bank balance hoped it would; my fine ramshackle of a house in Moncton’s gracious Old West End whose basement doesn’t always begin leaking at the merest mention of rain; my cellar stocked with holiday wine and spirits, including a not-quite sufficient supply of New Brunswick-distilled Gin Thuya, the undisputed ambrosia of all such heady elixirs.

By these standards, I would have to conclude that, yes, I am, indeed, happy (especially on Friday and Saturday nights when I’m likely to be found vigorously explaining to one or more hapless family members why James Bond was utterly correct: A martini must be shaken, not stirred).

But these aren’t the benchmarks of bliss an extensive exercise in mid-life naval-gazing in the December issue of The Atlantic magazine deems authentic.

Happiness, writes contributing editor Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, is not about stuff or loot or even the absence of serious injury and life-threatening infirmity. It’s about something called the “U-curve” and for many, if not everyone, it is as inescapable as aging, itself.

In fact, that’s kind of the point.

“In the 1970s, an economist named Richard Easterlin, then at the University of Pennsylvania, learned of surveys gauging people’s happiness in countries around the world,” Mr. Rauch reports. “Intrigued, he set about amassing and analyzing the data, in the process discovering what came to be known as the Easterlin paradox: beyond a certain point, countries don’t get happier as they get richer.”

Flash forward 20 years or so and, “happiness economics” re-emerges. “This time a cluster of labor economists, among them David Blanchflower of Dartmouth and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick, got interested in the relationship between work and happiness,” Mr. Rauch explains. “That led them to international surveys of life satisfaction and the discovery, quite unexpected, of a recurrent pattern in countries around the world.”

“‘Whatever sets of data you looked at,’ Blanchflower told me in a recent interview, ‘you got the same things’: life satisfaction would decline with age for the first couple of decades of adulthood, bottom out somewhere in the 40s or early 50s, and then, until the very last years, increase with age, often (though not always) reaching a higher level than in young adulthood. The pattern came to be known as the happiness U-curve. . .which emerges in answers to survey questions that measure satisfaction with life as a whole, not mood from moment to moment.”

All of which suggests that human evolution favors the cheerful – or, at least, those who enjoy enough time, leisure, money and job security to ask an existential question or two and, in Mr. Rauch’s case, get paid for running a few answers up the experiential flagpole.

Notably absent from this particular investigation, of course, is any shred of anecdotal evidence from people who might evince real and just cause to feel thoroughly horrible about their lives. Mr. Rauch (who is 54) interviewed people whose mien – baby-boomerish, affluent, employed. . .whiny – resembles his own.   

How happy, one wonders, will the victims of the Central Intelligence Agency’s systematic water-boardings, “rectal feedings”, beatings, and sleep-depriving isolation sessions find themselves as they cross into their 50s and 60s, a period when the “research” says they should start feeling perfectly marvelous about themselves?

How beatific is U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, these days? Her report – the first of its kind from any chamber of American government – outlines in devastating detail the horrific crimes against basic decency CIA perpetrated against its prisoners in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Said Senator Feinstein: “History will judge us by our commitment to a just society government by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say ‘never again.’”

Am I happy?

Let’s just say that life could be worse, as it evidently is for the millions who haven’t had the pleasure of pondering their own navels at the behest of the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine.

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Nov 01 2014
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Culture

Oh, puh-leeze do go on. . .

We have come to a phase in the culture of man where we regularly swing, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, from secrecy, subterfuge and prevarication to full, unadulterated, cringe-worthy disclosure.

Nowadays, it seems, there is no efficacious in-between, no pause at the bottom of gravity’s well to consider what we should hide from prying eyes or gleefully reveal about ourselves to the vast, voyeuristic social and mainstream medias.

And so, we learn about, in the one extreme, various lockdowns on simple knowledge, such as those imposed by the current federal government on “official” science – the ones in which publicly funded researchers are told to keep their trap shuts about everything unless duly authorized to gab.

These draconian injunctions invariably draw fire from the world community of eggheads, as was the case as recently as last week.

“Canadian federal government scientists are facing excessive and growing restrictions on their ability to publish and publicly communicate government scientific research,” the Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, declared in an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “At the same time, dramatic defunding of many government science programs has made it considerably more difficult for these scientists to attend conferences and collaborate with scientists abroad.”

The screed continue: “With large cuts to federal science departments and agencies planned until at least 2016, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government need to hear about the negative repercussions of such communication policies and funding cuts on international research and collaboration. The challenges are similar to those faced by U.S. government scientists in recent years – but support from scientists has led to scientific integrity reform within the U.S. government.”

Meanwhile, of course, shady reports from determined provocateurs, including Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and former NSA “desk-spook” Edward Snowdon, faithfully assure us that what John Q. Public doesn’t know about domestic government spying on average folks would fill several CIA safe houses around the world (and, apparently, often does).

“The federal government’s secretive electronic intelligence agency is not disclosing how long it can hold onto Canadians’ communications – even though its leaders have said that ‘firm’ time limits are in place to protect privacy,” the Globe and Mail reported in August.

“The strictures surrounding Communications Security Establishment Canada’s data-retention periods – including those affecting recognized ‘private communications’ and also ‘metadata’ – are blacked out from an operational document obtained by (the Globe).”

In the other extreme, we face a constant deluge of happy teenagers – and, now, their parents and even grandparents – blogging and texting and face-booking and twittering every minute detail of their private lives for the edification and enlightenment of the expanding ranks of the “who-gives-a-crap?” audience.

Honestly, who actually does give a crap about. . .”My 10-year old cat, Whiskas, died today. I am in mourning. . .He was such a fine animal. . .Actually, he was more than this. . .I believe we had a psychic bond. . .I always knew when it was time to feed him.”?

And now (drum roll please) there’s Jian Gomeshi, the alternately prickly and unctuous host of CBC One’s popular morning radio program “Q.”

Well, actually, he was. Now he’s just a recently muted blabbermouth in the wilderness.

The CBC fired his fine derriere when they caught wind of the fact that certain, ahem, sexual proclivities of their flagship host (whose yapping image has appeared, like a bloody brand statement, on every online platform Mother Corp. still has room in its winnowing budget to afford) seemed destined to go public.

According to a long tweet the other day, Gomeshi said he outed himself to CBC brass, saying, in effect, an ex-girlfriend and a fiendishly opportunistic freelancer had ganged up to embarrass him about his bedroom preferences.

The public broadcaster initially stated that the good fellow would be taking, what amounts to be, a leave of absence. Then, following Gomeshi’s yucky social-media explanation (which, naturally, went viral within seconds) and news that he would be suing his former employer to the tune of $50 million for, presumably, wrongful dismissal, the CBC changed its tune):

“The CBC is saddened to announce its relationship with Jian Ghomeshi has come to an end,” the statement read. “This decision was not made without serious deliberation and careful consideration. Jian has made an immense contribution to the CBC and we wish him well.”

Uh-huh. . .sure you do.

Since then, of course, things have gone from bad to worse in this oddly creepy saga. Nine women have come forward to offer what can only be Canada’s unofficial description of the mating habits of its very (if alleged) Marquis de Sade.

As in all such things nowadays, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle (except, of course, when it’s not) even if you really don’t want to hear it any of it.

Jun 24 2014
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Culture, Economy

On culture, New Brunswick is getting it right

 

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When the leaders of New Brunswick’s major political parties agree, it’s either cause for celebration or reason to head for the hills. After all, what are the odds that three public office holders of markedly dissimilar ideological pedigrees could be thoroughly right about a single issue on which they concur?

Generally, at least some degree of politically calculated equivocation imbues opposition response to an official announcement. But when it comes to developing the cultural sector in this province, Messrs. David Alward, Brian Gallant and Dominic Cardy truly are three musketeers in silk ties and summer suits.

For the sake one of the few sectors in this benighted neck of the woods that actually generates more insight than acrimony, let’s hope they stay that way.

Conservative Premier David Award is correct when he says – as he did last week – that “creativity is at the root of our growth as province and a people.” Would that more of this particular commodity sloshed around in the local economy. 

Still, it’s heartening to hear that his new and improved cultural policy, which updates an earlier iteration from 2002, reflects his government’s commitment to “provide the support to allow our creators to flourish.”

Given that the premier’s triumphant return to power in the fall is far from assured, it’s equally encouraging to hear Liberal tourism, heritage and culture critic Brian Kenny – presumably channelling his boss Mr. Gallant – state that “any time that we can give them (cultural entrepreneurs and workers) a helping hand and help them move forward is positive.” 

Indeed, enthused NDP Leader Dominic Cardy, “We’re happy to give this plan our support. Let’s make sure that the follow-through is there. . .Keep. . .supporting the arts and culture community.”  

For now, the plan is to pour an “additional $3 million” into this segment of the economy to, among other things, “increase operational funding for professional arts organizations; operating grants to New Brunswick’s key cultural institutions; funding for. . .professional artists, through the New Brunswick Arts Board; (and) funding for enhanced First Nations engagement processes as (these) relate to archaeological resources.”

The policy would also establish a Community Cultural Places program. . .“for organized and arms-length built heritage advocacy and. . .community museums.” It would “provide funding for activities related to community commemorations of historic events.” And it would reinstate and expand the “touring and presenting program for New Brunswick arts organizations and presenters.” 

We can, of course, argue whether three million bucks is enough to reach these goals. We can even debate whether the province can afford this comparatively modest sum, given the horrendous short- and long-term fiscal challenges it faces. 

What should be irrefutable, however, is the remarkable contribution that cultural industries make to the national and regional economies of this country.

Study after study – notably those by Statistics Canada and the Conference Board of Canada – have settled the case: The arts sector is the little engine the could, would and does, year after year, decade after decade.

“Our results demonstrate that culture is an indispensable part of the Canadian economy, permeating and adding value across the entire (spectrum). GDP from the culture sector amounted to more than $33 billion, on average, between 1996 and 2001. Similarly, the culture sector employed more than half-a-million workers, on average, over the same period. (Moreover) employment in the culture sector grew faster than that of the overall economy during this period.”

That’s an excerpt from a seminal 2004 study by StatsCan researcher Vik Singh. Four years later, the Conference Board added its own authoritative voice to the discussion: “Increasingly, countries around the world, as well as cities and regions, are recognizing the pervasive role that a dynamic culture sector plays as a magnet for talent, an enhancer of economic performance, and a catalyst for prosperity.”

The reason is simple: Talented, innovative, entrepreneurial people abhor a vacuum. If a community’s public spaces have nothing to offer beyond cinder blocks, parking lots, big-box stores and off-ramps, then business leaders won’t come. And, more importantly, if some do, they won’t stay. 

That’s something on which we can all agree and, now, our ritualistically fractious and partisan political leaders apparently do.

 

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May 01 2014
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Culture, Education

Liberal leader journeys back to the future on language

 

It is bitterly ironic that the only province in Canada that considers itself officially bilingual has never quite figured out how to teach french to english-speaking kids. Of course, political pronouncements are easy to make. What’s hard is translating aspirations into action.

New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant is on the right side of whatever angels ennoble a candidate for elected office when he insists that we’ve got to nab our children young if we expect them to learn a second language well enough to wield it confidently in and out of the classroom. Otherwise, we may as well equip each of the province’s adult anglophones with a copy of Rosetta Stone, and wish them luck.     

“One of the things that I believe we have to do is change and bring back the former entry point that we had for french immersion,” he said in a speech to the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce. “I will push as leader of the Liberal party for us to have an early entry point of Grade 1, if not even looking at kindergarten, to start teaching our children, giving the opportunity to pursue french immersion.”

All of which sounded very much like a mea culpa by proxy, as it was Mr. Gallant’s own Liberal predecessors who, while in office in 2008, pushed to end early immersion programs on the grounds that they weren’t working – at least according to one report authorized by the government of Shawn Graham.   

Among the many problems with the approach (lack of resources within the districted system was a crucial, if rarely mentioned, one) was the tendency towards streaming, in which well-off anglophone students disproportionately clustered in the immersion programs, leaving the poorer kids to languish in the truly ineffective core french classes. 

Still, Mr. Gallant insisted in his address, “There are ways to address that. We can ensure that we raise awareness, making sure that anyone from any socio-economic background that maybe less likely to pursue french immersion or have their children pursue french immersion are made aware of some of the benefits, what type of support they have, and exactly what the program means.”

What’s more, he added, “We have to ensure that we address all issues to ensure that all New Brunswickers and all children have the support they need in the classrooms no matter what program, no matter which school, no matter which region they’re from.”

It’s refreshing to hear a politician deploy a vernacular favored by neurobiologists and developmental psychologists, who talk about the urgent need for evidence-based policy in public school systems across the country. 

Among the many persistent myths they fight daily is the notion, still cherished by many, that people don’t require a structured, early start to their education to thrive academically, socially and economically. Hey teacher, Pink Floyd was right: Leave those kids alone. We’re all different. Vive la différence!    

It’s a nice idea, especially to those (including more than half of all members of parliament) who make it their business to mistrust anything they, themselves, have not been educated to understand. But cognitive biases do not sound arguments make.

The science is unequivocal. Children are virtual learning machines from the moment they are born (and even in the womb) to about age five or six. This is the optimal time to grab them and teach them, especially languages. About this, there can be no serious debate, and Education Minister Marie-Claude Blais’ determination to keep the current french immersion entry point at Grade 3 is more about political survival than anything else.

When early immersion programs fail to work, that says more about the weaknesses in the system, itself – a lack of pedagogical resources, conflicting curricular priorities, staffing shortages – than it does about a young child’s propensity to acquire a language. This was the lesson the previous government should have learned.

Mr. Gallant’s determination to restore the system is laudable. But if he is given the chance, he’ll have to do more than issue aspirational statements. 

He and his confreres will have to ensure that the educational apparatus in this province is sufficient to support the goal of producing a new generation of literate New Brunswickers, proficient in both official languages. 

 

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